Walter van van Teeffelen recently interviewed Australian Ambassador to The Netherlands Brett Mason and published an interesting article on “if then is now”. The following extract and photo above have been republished with permission and I encourage you to visit the link below for the full article and more photos….
The Australian Embassy is located on the Carnegielaan, behind the Peace Palace. Ambassador Brett Mason and Indra McCormick, Deputy Head of the Australian Mission, receive me in the Ambassador’s office. I have not yet sat down before I am taken to look at a large world map behind the Ambassador’s desk.
“On 25 October 1616, Dirk Hartog landed here just off the west coast of Australia,” says Brett Mason. He points at the map. “Almost 400 hundred years ago. His ship was called de Eendracht. In total, there were six ships. In January 1616 they departed from Texel. They followed the advice of Hendrik Brouwer, also a VOC Captain, who advised them to follow the eastern currents past Cape Good Hope in South Africa, and not to turn North-East toward India. Hartog arrived at an uninhabited island near Shark Bay. Later, this island was named Dirk Hartog Island. It was a very dangerous area for ships; there were a lot of shallows and reefs, and cliffs further over on the mainland”.
Read the full article on “if then is now”….
There is also a version of the same article in het Nederlands
Dutch Australian 
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